I’m offering a small run of mate cosies: “warm hands, cold mate” for this winter season. Each mate cosy is produced on my hacked kh930 knitting machine, by hand by me (the machine isn’t motorized yet) and then finished by hand by me. They are available in this limited run (probably around 40 pieces total) for a price of 60 euros for either black/white or black/red. If you would like a special order QR code on the front of your black/white cosy, that will cost 80 euros. The QR codes don’t really work very consistently since little knit v’s are not easily recognized as square pixels. They sort of work in the dark. You could improve this by writing a QR code reader filter that “sees” v’s as pixels. If you are the first to code such a filter, or if you are the first to code up any other means for creating readable QR codes for knitting, and you open source the code, I will give a cosy to you for free.

Shipping will not exist, in other words, this is for Berlin pick up only. Payment is either by German bank transfer or by cash in person during 28c3 or during BerlinSides or during BreakFast. This small run of cosies is a bootstrapping attempt on my part to raise money to fund a commercial industrial factory knitting run of 500 pieces of my 1D CA scarf. The proceeds from selling the scarves will raise money to purchase or at least partially purchase an industrial knitting machine myself to hack, open source, and run small knitting production runs locally. So if you purchase one, you are helping to create open-ness in textile manufacturing as well as make my life that much more awesome while I work on this project.

To order a mate cosy, drop me an email to fabienne at the name of this website. Please specify color (black/red or black/white) and/or QR code (black/white only). QR codes are available up to 25×25 (QR code Version 2) but I recommend QR code version 1 in 21×21 pixels. For the QR code, please don’t submit more than error correction L (the lowest) because it won’t help. The mate cosies will be sold on a first emailed (don’t play with your email headers, geez), first payed, first served basis. That means that I will email you back with a confirmation and the information on how to pay to secure your cosy.

Quite a few thank you’s are in order for even this small run: Marcus Loscher for ok-ing a small run of these related to his company’s delicious product club-mate, Lisa for her suggestion that I put a hand-warmer in the cosy, (thanks! I did!), Astera for her help in testing prototype four, Travis for his never ending help both in our crazy drive in November of 2010 to pick up the machine and our subsequent four days of no sleep and his support since then on software and hardware which we will be able to offer as a kit in the future, Skytee for his testing and de-busying of the pattern suggestions, LadyAda and Becky Stern and Steve Conklin for open sourcing and documenting their knitting machine efforts which allowed us to extend the hack, Jimmie for helping test QR code reading and error correction levels in double bed jacquard knitting, Steel Breeze for her help in documenting double bed jacquard and hands-on help with carriage setting, and the lovely machine knitter people who helped on the knitting machine boards on Ravelry.

Now for some hypertransparency! The cosies take about 2.5 hours each of my hands-on time to complete. The yarn for the cosies is Hamburger Wollfabrik “Pretty Woman” 60 percent extra fine merino, 40 percent acrylic. That means these cosies are machine washable cold on a delicate setting, but I recommend hand washing cold first with a bit of wool-friendly detergent in case the dye runs a bit. Each cosy uses 83 grams of wool. The black/red cosies use 60 grams of black, 23 grams of red, with 28 grams of the black in the ribbing. The black/white cosies use 32 grams of black, and 51 grams of white, with 28 grams of the white in the ribbing. Each cosy uses about 3.34 euros of wool.

The largest cost with regards to this production is obviously my hands-on labor. With the way knitting machines work, this hands-on production cost is not possible to reduce without owning or having access to an industrial knitting machine instead of my lovely but limited hacked consumer kh930 knitting machine from 1981. Even if I were to machine sew some of the seams, it wouldn’t speed up the time of hand casting off the gathered edge at the very top of the cosy, and the seam to the inside of the ribbing to the main body needs to be blind stitched in the double backing (not possible with a sewing machine). All that means is that I’ve made these as stream lined as technically and humanly possible, but it still takes a mini sweatshop style production on my part to produce them.

On the off chance that you have access to a hacked Brother knitting machine, or a knitting machine that can accept a computer defined pattern, here is how to make your own. If you offer these for sale, please don’t use the club-mate logo unless you have prior permission from the copyright holder. Please use your own art, and do so with creativity and awesomesauce. Here is the pattern:

Cast on 38L, 39R on the main bed and 38L, 38R on the double bed, as for ribbing with the needles offset. Set the yarn mast tensions to +1. Set the tension on both beds to zero, set the double bed to extra firm with the II lever to the right, and cast on right to left with your ribbing color (black for black/red, white for black/white). Hang your double bed cast-on comb and add weights.

Change the top carriage to slip left with the left part button pushed in. Change the bottom carriage to slip right with the right part switch pushed up. Change the extra firm lever on the double bed back to I. Change the tension on both beds to 1. Knit 3 circular passes (l-r, r-l, l-r) ending on the right side. Change both top and bottom carriage to ribbing setting by canceling the part buttons. Knit ribbing for 65 rows.

Hang extra claw weights on the edges of the knitting. With the carriage on the left, set your 77 wide by 96 stitch long pattern in the knitting machine’s memory with your hacked machine setup or with your proprietary computer link. Use a pattern that is simply two color, the kh930 will automagically explode it to double bed jacquard with the KRC key. Press the KRC key. While on the left, set the main carriage to KC(II) and set tension on both beds to 3. Push the carriage past the left turnaround mark, load in your main color (for both of my cosies, that color is black) and pull the carriage from left to right once across the bed. Now set the main carriage to slip in both directions, leave the KC(II) knob selected and set the double bed for birds-eye backing by setting both slip levers to P.R, select both the left and right “lili” knobs to “lili”, and set the tension lever to “lili”. You are now set up to knit double bed jacquard with an auto-backing in a mechanically defined birds-eye pattern. As you push the carriage across to the left towards the color changer, the display on the kh930 will tell you the next color (1 or 2, main or contrast, black or white, black or red) to chose in the secondary seven segment display. Continue in pattern until you have knit all 96 rows of your pattern, moving the claw weights up every 20 rows or so on the edges. When complete, the machine beeps. You will now have the contrast color and be on the left, change to the main color (black). Reset for ribbing (full needle rib as for the first half of the pattern) and clearing all the part buttons on the top and double bed, set the main carriage knob back to N.L, clear the “lili” knobs on the double bed, set the double bed tension lever back to I on the left, set the tension on both beds to 1. Knit two rows of ribbing in the main color, ending on the left. Use the color changer to change to the contrasting color or waste yarn, and knit 4 rows to perform a scrap off cast off. Cut your yarn, remove all weights, knit the carriage once from right to left to release the knitting from the machine.

Cast off by hand with the tail of the main color (black) by stitching through each stich, front and back, of the black row. It’s easiest to do this two stitches at a time, run a tapestry needle threaded with the black tail through the top of the back (purled) stitch from the front side of the fabric, then through the left edge of the front (knitted) stitch. Repeat across the top of your fabric, lightly tugging to gather the top edge of your Mate Cosy. When you have sewn through all the live black stitches on the top edge, unravel your four rows of contrast/waste yarn until the left, and use the tucked in stitches as extra strength for your gathered edge. Trim off the excess contrast yarn, leaving a tail as long as your main color cast off tail. Next, fold the ribbed part of the cosy up against the back of the cosy. Blind stitch the ribbing down along the cast-on edge. Next with an extra length of your main color (black), stitch from the cast off edge down the right side of the back of the cosy. Use a standard knit seaming technique of your choice. Stop when you reach the ribbing, and stitch a few top stitches holding in the ribbing, the edge of the cosy and tuck in the ends of your stitching back and forth in the lining for strength and cut the yarn. Taking yarn the color of your ribbing (black for black/red, white for black/white), place your Mate Cosy over an empty clean bottle of mate. Stitch the ribbing tightly into place starting at the top of the ribbing and work your way down to the bottom of the cosy. Insert a piece of flat elastic in the bottom folded-over edge of your cosy. Tie or stitch the elastic to itself to keep your cosy snug and tight on the bottom of the bottle. Stitch a few finishing stitches on the bottom of the hand-hold area of the cosy to hide the elastic. Remove the Mate Cosy from the bottle, and thread both the main and contrast gathering yarn tails at the top of the bottle on your tapestry needle. Gently pull the yarns to gather the top of the cosy to slightly larger than the circumference of the place on the bottle where the top your cosy will sit. Be careful to not break the yarns while gathering. Stitch the yarn tails back and forth in the lining to strengthen the gather and keep it in place without a knot. Congrats! You now have warm hands and cold mate!